Maybe the biggest question hanging over the Ohio State men’s basketball team when the season began was who, beyond Deshaun Thomas, would score points for the Buckeyes.

After their first game against an opponent on their level, it’s still hanging there.

“Today we’re going to work on the ball going through the basket,” coach Thad Matta said before practice yesterday.

Duh.

Fourth-ranked Ohio State made barely a third of its field goal attempts Wednesday in a 73-68 loss at No. 2 Duke in the ACC/Big Ten Challenge. Some of it was Duke’s defense, particularly the long arms of 6-foot-10 Mason Plumlee and 6-11 Ryan Kelly making it difficult to finish drives to the basket.

Some of it was forced shots by Ohio State, or attempts early in the shot clock, while the Blue Devils tightened the vise by steadily turning the game in their favor. And some of it was that the Buckeyes just flat missed open looks, point-blank at the basket, mid-range and from behind the three-point arc.

Regardless of the reason, though, the bottom line was that Thomas’ supporting cast — guards Aaron Craft, Lenzelle Smith Jr., Sam Thompson and Shannon Scott — made 10 of 41 shots from the field.

With Duke not leaving Thomas after he set screens for the guards, he attempted three shots and did not score in the final 8:25. Ohio State missed seven of nine shots as Duke turned a five-point deficit into an eight-point lead with a minute to play.

Only the Blue Devils’ missing the front end of three consecutive one-and-one free-throw opportunities allowed the Buckeyes, fouling Duke on every possession, to hang on to a chance to win in the final minute.

“We knew our guards were going to have to have a big game in order to win,” Matta said yesterday. “They weren’t going to leave Deshaun’s body. The shots that we got (we expected to get). They just didn’t go down for us.”

The only place to go from there is back to practice. There are no trades or D-League call-ups in college basketball; you have who you have for this season. The Buckeyes need to shoot better, starting today against Northern Kentucky in Value City Arena.

“We had a lot of forced shots in the second half that we didn’t have in the first half,” Scott said. “But a lot of our shots were good shots. We just have to knock ’em down. We take those shots every day in practice, but we make them all the time. In an environment like (Duke’s Cameron Indoor Stadium), we’ve just got to be ready and hit ’em.”

One potential remedy, LaQuinton Ross, scored five points in 10 minutes in the first half but did not get off the bench in the second until 1:32 remained. He scored four points as Matta swapped Ross’ offense for Thompson’s defense possession by possession.

Ross played in the first half while Thomas was on the bench with two fouls, “and even with Kelly in foul trouble, they went right at him (with two backup forwards),” Matta said.

Had Ross played earlier in the second half, he would have had to match up against Duke guard Rasheed Sulaimon, who gave Thompson and Smith fits while scoring all 17 of his points after halftime. Matta thought that unwise.